Why do more and more people feel they are engaged in meaningless work? In the spring of 2013, anthropologist David Graeber (1961–2020) posed this question in a provocative essay titled "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs." It went viral. Since then, people around the world have continued to debate the answer.
Graeber wrote a book exploring one of modern society’s most frustrating and profound moral issues: the transformation of work into tedious, boring, and utterly pointless nonsense. How many people feel their labor serves no useful purpose? Why do employers think they can pay less for socially valuable professions while paying more for useless work? Why, despite technological progress, do we work more rather than less? Where is there more useless work—in the public or private sector? And how can we halt the "bullshitization" of the economy?
Graeber reveals the historical, social, and political reasons behind the spread of "bullshit jobs." Ranging from feudalism to managerial culture, from the origins of bureaucracy to the rise of the quaternary sector, and drawing on thinkers from Thomas Carlyle to John Keynes and André Gorz, Graeber’s study shows how our attitude toward work emerged—and how it might be changed. This book is for anyone who wants to believe that work should have meaning.